Twitter lists? Here are 5 ideas on how to utilise them for your business.

If you are following over 50 people on Twitter then it is time to start segregating these people into twitter lists so that you can manage your time more effectively. Recently, I was facilitating a Twitter workshop and one of the delegates said “now, what sort of lists should I have?”.

My answer was to simply go through the people that you are following and you will naturally see what category they should fall into, although there are some basic categories that you should perhaps consider. If you would like to learn how to put people onto a list, then here is a very quick video that I put together in 2012.

[leadplayer_vid id=”51C6A6F8C8A9A”]

Here are my top five categories that I would recommend that you start with.

#1 Clients – Private list.

Having your current clients in a list should be top of your things to do on Twitter. Please, please make sure that you set this list as private, rather than public and not to make the mistake that I did in the early days! Read more about my mistake here:

#2 Notice Me – Private list

On this list you should only have a maximum of 10 people. These are your key people / prospects that you would like to engage with and ultimately you would like them to follow you back. Once a person in this list then follows you back, they get removed from the list and added to your client list. Then you add your next prospect.

#3 Competitors – Private

It is important to know that you do not need to actually hit the “follow” button in order to keep an eye on your competition. Simply add their Twitter handle into your “competitor list”. So they are all in one place.

#4 Thought Leaders – Public

I follow all of the top social media gurus so that I do not miss a trick when it comes to my industry. If these messages were amongst all the other noise then I would miss the important announcements that is so crucial to my business. Following your industry influencers is a key strategy for any business.

#5 Industry Sector – Public

My niche market is those who are in the Recruitment Industry, therefore I do not want to miss any opportunities for dialogue with my target market. Following Recruiters, and then having them all in one list is an important strategy for my business. Who is your target market? Who would you categorise into this area.

Bonus list – Celebrities – Public

As an extra bonus, the other list that I have is for celebrities. This is a personal choice for me and if I have time I will look through the list to see what the celebs are saying. Having it all in one list makes life so much easier, as my newsfeed is not flooded with chit chat.

Once you have your list set up on Twitter, then I would strongly advise using something like Hootsuite to import those lists, so that you can see them all in columns, which makes it easier to manage. (I feel a video coming on!).

You may also like:

If you are working in the world of recruitment then you can no longer ignore social media. We now live in a candidate led world and therefore it is more important than ever to tap into those passive candidates. But, becoming confident in social media activity and language does not happen overnight. It takes time to build an audience before you can even think about conversions.

Green Umbrella Marketing have put together a daily task list for recruiters and recruitment business owners to help you source and nurture potential clients and passive candidates.